As an undergraduate, Matthew C Augustine studied English, Rhetoric, and French at the University of Illinois and then went on to graduate study at Washington University in St Louis, where he became interested in the literary and political cultures of seventeenth-century England. Much of his work has been devoted to deforming the distinctions, boundaries, and oppositions that have traditionally governed our understanding of this period and of its cultural regimes. The poet and politician Andrew Marvell has for several years been a central focus, but he has also written and collaborated widely in studying seventeenth-century literature and literary culture.
Steven N. Zwicker was born in San Diego, California, and grew up in Los Angeles. Since his undergraduate days at UCLA, he has been interested in early modern literature, especially the literature of the civil war years and Restoration. Hisgraduate work was directed by Barbara Lewalski at Brown University and when he began teaching at Washington University in St Louis the late historian John Pocock taught the history of political thought at the university. Pocock's work and teaching opened for Zwicker a new way to understand relations between politics and literary culture, and he has worked along that axis for a number of years, writing and teaching about Marvell, Milton, Rochester, and Dryden, and, more broadly, Restoration culture and politics.